Thanks for all your answers.
Does anyone know the going rate for an engineer to come in and inspect for a single family in Brooklyn?

Posted by: crocodileeyes at June 19, 2009 3:58 PM in response to What's the process?

I think there's some confusion here. As slopefarm said, an engineer is usually hired after the offer is accepted to make sure that there are no hidden problems with the house (e.g. cracks in the foundation, mold behind the walls, improperly constructed additions, etc). You can use the engineer's report to a) back out of the deal or less often b) try to negotiate a lower price based on the fact that there is a problem you did not know about.

What you want to do is bring in a contractor who can give you a ball park figure for the kind of renovation you want to do. This needs to be done BEFORE the offer is made, since you won't know how much to offer if you don't know how much it will cost to renovate. Sellers are usually fine with this, though they will probably want to have someone in the house while you two are looking it over. Happens all the time.....

Posted by: slopenick at June 19, 2009 4:02 PM in response to What's the process?

Our house looked like a full on wreck when we bought it. In order to make a confident offer we had 2 different engineers come with us prior to making an offer.

It was a bit complicated to get in so frequently due to a strange family situation with prior owners, but the broker was a champ about getting us in, many times pre-offer.

As first time single-family historic home buyers without unlimited resources, we felt like it was important to understand what we were bidding on prior to even making the offer.

The folks we used were friends, so I can't comment on price, but I could guess about 100 to 150 an hour.

Posted by: Brooklyn11218 at June 23, 2009 9:31 AM in response to What's the process?